Collins The Law and the Lady 1875

威尔基·柯林斯 法律和夫人 1875

Author: Wilkie Collins

Copyright: Public domain

Published in: 1875

Word count: 129,379 words (≈ about 9 hours)

Valeria Woodville's first act as a married woman is to sign her name in the marriage register incorrectly, and this slip is followed by the gradual disclosure of a series of secrets about her husband's earlier life, each of which leads on to another set of questions and enigmas. Her discoveries prompt her to defy her husband's authority, to take the law into into a labyrinthine maze of false clues and deceptive identities, in which the exploration of the tangled workings of the mind becomes linked to an investigation into the masquerades of femininity. Probably the first full-length novel with a woman detective as its heroine, The Law and the Lady is a fascinating example of Collins's later fiction.